Making of EVEREST - Behind the Scenes with the Real Climbers, Actors, and Locations

the story of the disaster that happened on everest in 1996 really captivated me there's something so gripping about it and so fascinating it's one of the great mysteries and moments on everest anybody who climbs anywhere in the world knows that and has theories and opinions on what happened and there is a sense of responsibility in terms of doing justice to it everyone associated with this film has been deeply concerned about its authenticity and honoring the characters we filmed in kathmandu and actually all the way up to almost 16 000 feet near the base of everest so that was very very authentic and we were in the place where it happened there was a natural progression which i think really helped us all get into our parts the foreignness of nepal the religion you know the the music the sounds the food and then you get out into the mountains looking at one of the most spectacular views i've ever seen i just saw a village up there frozen waterfall right there one of the most incredible valleys i've ever seen right there i just went through the town of probably the kindest people i've ever experienced pretty cool nepal is a world unto its own it's a beautiful place but the infrastructure is not set up for typical movie making most of what you see as you're hiking up has been carried up by hand and by yaks to think about an entire crew getting up there every morning and the logistics that it takes to do that is extraordinary there are times where you have helicopters flying over one unit to the next unit transferring an actor to a stunt scene or then bringing them back for something else or bringing food to the second unit it was a sight to behold [Music] i've calculated we had over 190 to 200 individual helicopter landings in the approach to mount everest it totally eclipsed any other logistical effort i had made in the himalayas i don't think anybody really knew the magnitude of what we had to put in place when we got to kathmandu we couldn't get to the mountains so we were sitting in the airport and after like two days we were day and a half behind so we had sort of batten down everything and just get up to the mountains and shoot our way out seeing the crew up there on the mountain every day was the part that really kind of blew me away i think we were like 15 000 feet and that's that's pretty high man it was hard to breathe you would walk and you take 15 20 steps you're like it's so hard to walk there people don't realize even in the hills up towards everest you get this mountain sickness and it's just like every step is like three times harder than at home it was dangerous for going up to the memorial and going too high too fast and having altitude sickness so you have a camera guy sitting there and you know he's starting to feel like he has the most severe flu he's ever had and you're trying to do another scene but you don't even know your name because you're so altitude sick the crazy thing is you know you're feeling those headaches and you're feeling all that that pain at night and in the morning and yet you can't wait to jump back in the helicopter and go up and see the most amazing things you've ever seen and then realize that you're still only halfway to the top of everest and you feel like that if you look right through that gap there's the summit of everest it is 100 real it gives the film an absolute grounding and because we shot it at the beginning the actors got that too so they had a recent immediate experience of trekking up towards base camp that they could then use for the rest of the film with 2 000 feet 600 vertical meters to camp for it's roped all the way so i know you guys can do it okay i want you to enjoy yourselves this is going to be a nice walk up the hill after leaving nepal we moved straight to northern italy in valsanales right on the border between northern italy and austria there's only very few places you could go to that we're going to match the rock and the landscape under the bright blue skies because that intensity of light at everest is what we were hoping for the cinalis was a really amazing place it's very cold it's windy a lot of times you don't have to act you're just trying to stay on the mountain during scenes yeah these these are pretty uh windy blustery conditions it's blowing about you know up to 40 50 kilometers an hour outside here at times uh pretty miserable a lot of fresh snow blowing around the temperature is 7.7 degrees centigrade we have wind that's gusting from 10 to 15 to 20 kilometers per hour it's really hard on exposed hands and explodes flesh especially for the camera team and the grips that have to grip bare metal it's just kind of like arctic filming conditions it took them three days to get the wind machine up and uh when it came to it we didn't need the wind machine it was brutal it was serious with avalanche warnings and you know having to move and our sets getting buried and sherpas having to dig them out and yet you know we uh we persevered and we got some hardcore stuff pull up rob back back oh it takes him boom we had this phrase that i said you know please no acting you know we are going for the visceral but the reality of it not putting on a character being somebody on a mountain we do takes on this movie 15 minute long takes you know balthazar likes to roll and likes us to experience the elements and has pushed us in that way i love that getting as close as you can come to the real thing is always fascinating there's no substitute for how an environment really impacts upon you and whether that's freezing wind or you know driving sleet and snow and your inability to to see properly and breathe properly i'd rather suffer through that knowing that it's going to look authentic and amazing than be uh comfortable people get bored of nice times you know that's like sitting in the sun for for two months you just get bored you know first day of shooting minus 30 celsius i mean you could hardly think it was so cold you know you get through it in a weird way you know and it looks great on film you know breath coming out of them and the the coldness in their faces you have to come together when you're uncomfortable you have to you know and there was enough chaos on the set and chaos in the mountains that we all came together we were on an expedition we were a team you know from day one we bonded very quickly i mean i can honestly say that i made friends on this and i know for a fact that they will be friends for the rest of my life and i think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we really went through something together you know you see the personalities of the characters come out but you also see the actor behind it going through a massive amount of emotions in my own way i got to watch these actors go through a trajectory of severe emotions hey listen mate i've checked twice okay i'm telling you they're only okay it was an immersive experience i think that's what people enjoyed you know we're able to get through the tough hours and then and you know and the length of the shoot and the difficulties these types of films and these types of shoots don't come around very often so you know we all went off on a very big adventure together we all had a very good time we had a really good time together and um it's not like an usual film set if you're going to make a movie about people climbing up the highest mountain in the world you need some sort of rugged individual to to be the leader of that balthazar cornwicker is the perfect mix for the movie there is a fearlessness to him he wants this movie to be massive he wants this movie to feel dangerous he wants you to feel exhilarated in the process yet at the same time there's a huge beating heart underneath it that looks good that's the best one i call bald the horse because he's like the he's like the strong man you know he's he's extremely competitive works so hard he's not going to put you through anything that he wouldn't do himself he's a great leader in that aspect i trained a lot myself bicycling in a snowstorm at home you know like just getting myself into physical and mental state of being able to sustain focus through this kind of adventure his approach is so sort of gung-ho he really doesn't want to hear that you can't do something and i think the fact that he was an actor first and foremost before he became a director his sense is like you know i've been an actor i know what i know what it's like and let's just do it he's really interested in not just what he thinks he needs but what the actors might bring beyond what he thinks he needs so we're encouraged to bring something new on every take and once he has what he needs roll a couple more times and see if things come out that he might think were more interesting than things that he might have thought could be part of the scene for me in the end of the day everest is a metaphor for any kind of ambition whether it's making movies whatever it is you know this is this is the most clearest picture of that there's only been one other movie before this film that i've made in my career that the environment of shooting has been similar to and beyond anything even more so than the movie itself the relationships we have all made together have been incredible this movie this mountain deserves that i think universal and working title know that and i think they are working as hard as they can and have for so many years developing this project because they want to do service to all the people who perished and those who have been up there somebody to come down safely and those who wish to in the future part of being human is reaching out to try and conquer different things there's something in the human being who wants to do what jake does in the movie which is to touch the top of it i think we've gone a long way towards doing that there are a lot of my friends now who haven't got a voice anymore i want to stand up and speak for them so that their story is told as well as possible i believe that those who tell stories you know are have a responsibility of doing it the best way they can we went to new zealand to meet the loved ones of the the the characters in the story jason came over in september 2013 with the producers and with balthazar kumqua the director they all impressed us with their stated aim to try to make as authentic a production as possible yeah what what are we doing in our planet [Applause] everyone i met the first thing they said was tell me more about this person how did they act on the mountain how do they speak how do they move it was really quite extraordinary i'd never heard there you know this side or met these people and heard their experience of it and their thoughts on it all jason was taking his role as as playing rob really to hut he wanted to know so much more than just about rob as it happened in the story i was working as a doctor in a high altitude medicine clinic and rob hall and his climbing partner gary ball were trekking through on their way up to try and ascend everest rob invited me not out to dinner but to go and climb with him in alaska so that was our first date so to speak so that was that was rather wonderful he was a natural leader and a gentle man not prone to making snap decisions he was a man that i would have followed in the mountains everybody in our group uh held him in very high esteem he's just a great guy had a sense of confidence not just in himself but also that this whole group was going to come together and function well as a team our bodies will be literally dying and i mean literally dying so the game is can we get you up to the top and down to the bottom before that happens you sure can in the 96 year the team that we had was a really good one everybody got on well they were a team we did not know that that storm was coming go to rob you've got to get yourself down a storm coming at you is different than a storm coming up underneath you and so you're in great shape one second two or three minutes later it's trying to blow you off the hill the weather was bad and there was still more than 20 people out at nightfall they're out there i need help i didn't really think i was going to live through it i was absolutely certain i was dead everest during the day and everest at night are two different places and one of them you really don't want to be on i have no idea why i opened my eyes as i awaken i can see my wife and children as if they were just standing in front of me and it drives me to my feet when it came right down to it i just wasn't ready to die and i was going to keep moving and keep trying until i was taken down uh but one way or the other at that point i was absolutely confident whatever was required i was going to walk out of this place back early in the morning of the 11th of may i heard a voice and i said that's rob and i just scrambled to the radio rob you've got to get moving you've got to come on down i talked with him and at that instant i knew he was going to die the chance of rescue if you collapse above the south summit is virtually zero rob used to say might as well be on the moon he said to me don't worry too much i hugged my 33-week pregnancy and didn't feel alone when they all came back to new zealand i was given a letter signed by all the sherpas the base camp ones and the mountains they wrote dear dr jan we're sorry we couldn't rescue rob too much windy on south coal and then all their names [Music] i've been to everest base camp when i was 10 so in 2007. when i met people that um knew my dad i was really overwhelmed by the love and the feelings they had towards him i did find it a moving experience because i knew that this was the closest that i'd ever be to my dad [Music] it turned out to be maybe the best thing that's happened to me in the last 20 years it saved my marriage it saved my relationship with my kids i now live much more in the present i am much more at peace if i knew every bit of pain every bit of loss i do it again in a heartbeat i think we do need to shine the lights on people who do extraordinary things and that is my hope that people see those things and think we can do extraordinary things [Music] there she is [Music] well the film happens in areas where it's very inconvenient to shoot you don't want to take axes up there and it's not called the death zone for nothing once you get above a certain height so we needed to figure out what was the best way to do it justice in pioneer studios the top of it is what we're dealing with the upper 3000 feet is mostly what we deal with on the bond stage south coal climb up to the southeast ridge the balcony the south summit the hillary stump where it all fell apart for doug and rob and then the summit let's do it there's a thousand photographs of it you know so everybody knows what it is so you can't fudge a location to make it work we had to make a composite set that kind of worked for quite a few different sequences whether it's a ridge or it's the summit or the hillary step up to the platform here that's the avalanche we've got storms we've got snowfall there's people falling it's big emotional and dramatic acting sequences so you know it needs you to be in a controlled environment did you happen to catch uh the fact that he put pads on i just have it be known when i did my stunt on the ladder there were no pads i just kind of winged it for the summit you've got to be so specific you want so much control the reality when people go up ever is they can only get certain times of day it's all about how the shadows fall on the mountain and that to where the sun comes from therefore in order to replicate it you need to be able to recreate the light it gives sal much more potential to control the light because during the ascent it's a beautiful crisp spring morning and that's the whole kind of gist of the story that it's all so perfect all so well but you know it obviously ends quite badly the salt we used for the snow in the studios was brutal i had a lot of scenes with josh uh so we kind of go through the same experience and man i mean he's he's a strong man but he would say how harsh it was you're resorting to imagination more than the reality of what you're going through and yet you've already created this this core group and this core feeling that you can rely on the mountain it was really a sum of its parts to set that you shoot from five or six different angles to be five or six different moments on the mountain i like to call it the hair extension way of doing it because doing it all in pan would be a wig you know but like mixing the the real stuff with things of course we couldn't do it really because it's too high really makes for both not only visually but also i think for the performances makes it much more real daddy the visual effects supervisor is going to blur the edges just sort of gel it together the way we had really wanted to achieve this was by building a 3d model of the entire everest area we would match move the cameras and we would then take those cg cameras and we would put them in the actual location on our 3d model rotate it to be looking in the correct direction and then you have an absolutely correct geographical version of what you would see what it also gave us was the ability to do these big fully cg establishing shots that were inspiring the way in which you can use visual effects is is incredible and that that taking an audience to real places through visual effects rather than to fantastical places is something that interests me a lot the thing about ball is he knows what he wants ultimately when he gets there and he's not happy he'll stop the shoot until it's done right and that's great because he's a man from the snow and ice so he knows snow and ice which obviously makes my job slightly more difficult because he has a very very critical eye but it's good because it's always pushing us as a department to try and get it as as realistic and gritty and visceral as as the story demands it's been remarkable to see what can be done on a big stage i found that really reassuring and really caused me to have such a high regard for the quality of this team and their craft that they could take a synthetic mount in a big stage and make it look and feel like the top of mount everest [Music] i'm on the top of everest helen we made it oh we copy you loud and clear rob it's wonderful to hear your voice up there i know that bolt wanted to make it as real as possible so suddenly we're in nepal it was cold it was -20. every single person who came out onto the mountain spent days before learning how to put ropes on and off and how to cramp on and you know it's there's a lot of there's a lot of technical work involved you know everyone rocks up with their gear and they don't know how to use it to begin with everyone to learn and to deal with their their gear because your gear is what saves you up there with what looks after you you know you know john hawks was amazing you know he'd never even knew what a crampon was you know and but but it's it's it's those types of things that gets you focused you find your character and everybody was committed he can't be too far ahead of you mate yeah i'll make it down at half the time we did a altitude simulation when we were training for the movie all together as a cast and we went up to what was you know the equivalent of 30 000 feet we were there in this chamber for 10 minutes uh josh brolin and i decided to stay longer we thought we could handle it you know and then all of a sudden we got out i immediately just went from laughing and laughing laughing to being really sad sort of within 10 minutes of being out and it was this incredible experiment and realization the power of being so high up what it does to your mind i'm pretty sure you're having another look no i just have they're not filled listen look mate i checked twice all right i'm an outdoorsy guy and i never really climbed united something that never really even peaked my interest but then going up to just shy of base camp there in nepal and you're like oh man i kind of i might be able to do that am i able to do this and are they treating us like actors doing a story or they really want us to be the thing and they want us to go to boot camp and are we at war what are we doing once i said yes we climbed mount whitney we climbed mount shasta put myself in situations being a guy who's afraid of heights was afraid of heights that scared me literally to death as our guides on that we had dave brashears who had been a consultant on the film and has been up over as many times as a guy cotter who also features in the film and was up the mountain in 1996 and now runs adventure consultants so the cast had two people who they got to know very well who had been through the real experiences of what we were about to depict but also ongoing mountaineering experience to help this cast get into it there was a lot of preparation for this project a lot of things to learn luckily we were blessed with david brashears and guy cotter and many other excellent climbers who kind of showed us the ropes literally we did training for these actors to teach them how to climb and how to look good and and they did i think the way that they took these roles on really impressed me [Music] i have been so deeply affected and pleased by the level of commitment from the actors to bring authenticity and dignity and truthfulness to the characters and to the story everybody afforded themselves pretty pretty well though considering most of us hadn't done anything like that before all right we got all gone we were very safe and we had all the you know guy cotter was there to protect us and and you know and actually called a day once and then an avalanche happened later in the day in the same place where we were filming guys we're gonna have to we're gonna have to stop i'm sorry that everlast is coming down here down here big storm came in and if we'd still been up there we would have all been stuck so i had to make a call to leave the mountain which was really tough because we've only just started filming but at the end of the day that's not as important as keeping everybody safe so folks we have an increased avalanche risk so please safely slowly make your way down you lead a team like that and you are a team leader you have to be so charismatic but also so trustworthy and a lot of the mountain climbers that we've met like guy carter and david has since sent they're all kind of similar kind of guys they're just so reliable but so lovely and really caring and you would trust him with your life [Music] you

Channel: David Snow

Views: 38,269

Rating: 4.9360728 out of 5

Keywords: Summit of mt Everest;, Everest climbing expedition, everest expedition, everest climbing, best everest documentary, everest documentary, climbing everest, everest film, everest full length film, everest deat zone, everest deathzone, everest documentaries, best everest films, everest climbing footage, everest death rate, everest hiking, Everest the movie, where was everest the movie filmed, wheres rob halls body, making of everest the movie, everest the movie 2015

Id: m2j8SgpNUdY

Length: 27min 49sec (1669 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021